Report after report of election interference is being heard on all social media channels. Early voting in many states is seeing problems. Pennsylvania is one such state that is also a swing state. Swing states are the states that are so closely divided between candidates that they decide the final outcome of an election. During the early voting process and on October 29, officials stopped people from forming in line at 1.45pm, however the law stipulates that anyone who forms in line up to 4 pm can vote. This activity quickly drew everyone’s attention. According to Reuters news, the Donald Trump campaign sued and on October 30, a judge in Pennsylvania extended the early voting deadline to Friday at 5 pm (2). Republican voters are calling this a victory for the party because many more voters are early-voting this year when compared to 2020 and they want every vote they can get. They are encouraging every citizen to get out and vote in your state if early-voting is still going on over this weekend.
Also out of Pennsylvania, a voter roll study discovered 3,594 voters that are under the age of 8 years old, a violation of voting law. According to the webpage, Stop bogus ballots, “When the state of Pennsylvania tells you they have clean voter rolls, we are here to show you that is not the case.”(4) This same webpage has interesting articles such as “The steal is On” that is worth reading.
As of today November 2, 2024, hundreds of lawsuits are being pursued related to election inference and early-voting fraud in many states. It’s essential that these suits be cleared out and settled before November 5 so that voters feel confident of the voting outcome. Every state does its voting differently and perhaps all of this confusion and mistrust will push for voting reform. We need a consistent voting system shared by all the states and counting paper ballots has been suggested. Although doing paper ballots requires many hands and is time consuming, it does keep voting non-computerized and out of the internet system where it can be tampered with. It may be the only form of accurately counting our votes.